Mrs. Jim turned. “No, it’s not awful. Jim’s got a job and we’ve got our health. The rest is in the Lord’s hands. Didn’t He send you good people along?”
A few minutes later they were saying good-bye after having wished each other well. They drove off in opposite directions.
For a while something intangible silenced the energetic teachers. Perhaps they and Mrs. Lurie were weighing the possible hazards that still awaited Jim and his family.
Fran finally found his tongue. “I think it’s putting quite a strain on the Lord to expect Him to send a car along—or find sleeping quarters! Don’t you agree, Judy?”
“Maybe.” She was thinking of her own problems now dwarfed by the recent encounter. “Faith is beautiful,” she said dreamily.
“Beautiful, but not sensible,” Fran answered with a skeptical grin.
An hour later they reached a town. Passing warehouses and unpretentious stores, Fran drove straight to a plain-looking restaurant with an enormous sign, “Welcome to Leadville and Walker’s Cafe and Bar.”
“Here’s where we eat,” Fran told the crestfallen Judy, who had envisaged a gilded palace.
Seated at a longish wooden table, each studied the oversized menu card. Next to such tempting items as sizzled hamburgers with Western trimmings, steak hunter style, and the like were pictures of once famous mines and in fine print, the history of Leadville. Judy, her appetite for the printed word unimpaired, read avidly while munching her food.
“The population of Leadville, once sixty-five thousand, has dwindled to five. Look, here’s a picture of Matchless that Horace Tabor gave to Baby Doe!”